NASA Targets April 1 for Artemis II Moon Mission Despite Ongoing Risks

NASA is working to launch its Artemis II moon mission as soon as April 1, said Lori Glaze, one of the agency’s acting associate administrators, at a press conference on Thursday. The mission has been delayed numerous times, including twice already this year—most recently because of a safety issue with the rocket. “I am comfortable and the agency is comfortable with targeting April 1 as our first opportunity,” she said, stressing that the date is subject to change depending on the amount of work needed to make the spacecraft flight-ready. “As always, we’ll always be guided by what the hardware is telling us, and we will launch when we’re ready.” Artemis II will carry four astronauts—NASA’s Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen—on a record-breaking journey around the moon. Lofted to space by the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, NASA’s Orion capsule will take those astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have gone before. NASA officials at the conference emphasized astronaut safety is guiding their decisions. But John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis II Mission Management Team, admitted that the data indicates that the likelihood of Artemis II going exactly to plan is just a little better than a coin toss. “If you look at the data over time, over the lifespan of just building new rockets, right, the data would show you that one out of two is successful. You're only successful 50 percent of the time,” Honeycutt said. “I think we’re in a much better position than that.” Astronaut safety was core to a recent Office of the Inspector General report released last week that found NASA had room for improvement on risk reduction in its ambitions to land humans back on the moon using the Human Landing System—the agency’s plan for moving astronauts from the lunar surface to orbit—and especially for crew survival. Glaze and Honeycutt emphasized that Artemis II will do something no other mission has done before—and that brings unknown risks. If NASA moves toward liftoff on April 1, the target time is 6:24 P.M. EDT, Glaze said. If that slips for any reason, the agency could also target a launch on April 2 at 7:22 P.M. EDT, she added. That addition means the agency will have a total of six potential launch dates in early April. Glaze also said that the agency will likely not attempt another “wet dress rehearsal”—a critical test for launch readiness that involves filling the rocket with fuel and rehearsing the countdown that, in the past, has raised numerous problems with Artemis II. NASA’s upcoming mission has encountered multiple issues, from hardware snags to schedule delays to budget overruns. Last month NASA scrapped a March launch date for the rocket and moved it off the launchpad after the SLS encountered helium flow issues during a wet dress rehearsal—it had previously experienced hydrogen leaks and other problems in an earlier wet dress that had caused its target launch to slip once already this year. Similar issues delayed its predecessor, Artemis I, by months. Shawn Quinn, manager of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, said that the helium problem stemmed from a seal blocking the flow of helium and that it has been fixed. Artemis II will likely roll back out to the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Fla., by March 19, he added. And all these delays have compounded on the agency’s plans to return astronauts to the moon. Last month NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced that Artemis III, originally envisaged as a crewed lunar landing, would actually be confined to another trip to orbit. The agency is now targeting 2028 and Artemis IV to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than half a century.